| [Sep. 20th, 2013|10:58 pm] |
For a thing with only half her vision left, the demon-queen was a good shot.
The liquid burned. Raidou ripped his mask off as it began to crumble, ceramic smearing under his fingertips. His armor smoked, coin-sized patches of cloth melting. Hot spots of pain ignited across his skin everywhere the spatter hit: shoulders, hands, scalp, eyelids.
Kumo had used chemical attacks during the war. The training came roaring back. He dodged hard, in case a second attack followed, and ripped through a half-dozen blind seals. Chakra yanked the rain into a broad sheet; it rose, swirled, and dropped on him like an upended bathtub, washing the acid away in a shock of cold-wet-ow-goddammit.
The distraction cost them. Rock shattered as the demon-queen tore her leg free from Raidou’s shackle jutsu. She reared up, long black body casting the mountain base in shadow, and snake-whipped her head from side to side. Katsuko clung desperately. Straw-colored blood flew as her sword claimed another eye. The demon-queen screamed and raked pincered claws over her own face, ignoring the damage she did to herself in the effort to get at her torturer.
A small body plummeted.
Raidou couldn’t tell if Katsuko had been knocked free, or if she’d jumped, but either way, she fell. And she landed hard.
Ryouma gave a wordless yell of rage, which would’ve been Raidou’s line, if Raidou could breathe. Three half-sized demons died in a crunching spray of rot and torn-off limbs, and then Ryouma was a fast-moving blur through the rain, streaking up one of the queen’s rain-slick legs and across the broad back, aiming for that tiny star-cracked target.
The demon-queen reared even higher, and let herself drop backwards.
It was like watching a tree fall in slow motion, except bigger, darker, and gut-wrenching. When she slammed down, the mountain danced. Giant cracks split through the bludgeoned earth, and the meticulously placed explosion tags finally detonated, bringing down the third entrance in a landslide of fire and wasted chakra. The queen’s tunnel shivered and collapsed, throwing rock splinters and dirt clods into the sodden air. The queen writhed on her back, thoroughly crushing anything trapped beneath her, and Raidou couldn’t feel Ryouma’s chakra signature.
Or see him anywhere.
Cold, crystal clarity trapped any panic Raidou might have felt under glass, locking it down deep into a problem he could attend to later, when he had time for nightmares. Right now, Katsuko was there and the queen was there, and he needed to deal with both.
He formed seals on the move. Chakra sunk into a new wave of jutsu as he bolted across treacherous ground, dodging demons and the queen’s thrashing tail, making for the slim, motionless body lying too close to the queen’s shadow. Katsuko still wasn’t getting up.
Raidou let the jutsu go.
Arms of black earth burst out of the ground, grabbing for the demon-queen. She screamed outrage as they wrapped around her six legs, breaking and reforming. One grabbed the base of her tail. Another snapped around her throat. Two more strangled her claws, choking the hinges and forcing the pincers open, splayed uselessly apart. The demon-queen fought furiously, bucking and jack-knifing, but she had less leverage on her back. Like an upended turtle, she couldn’t get the purchase to rip free. As long as Raidou had the chakra, he could hold her.
So, ten minutes. Thirty with a soldier pill.
He skidded to his knees next to Katsuko and ran forced-steady hands down her neck and armored back. Bone didn’t grate beneath his fingers. Nothing looked twisted. He turned her over, pulling her mask off.
And saw stars when her chakra blazed back to startled awareness, and her katana hilt thumped into the underside of his chin, clacking his teeth together.
“Ow, goddammit.” |
|